Three Sorts of Naturalism - univie.ac.at · of naturalism is referred to as ‘neo-Humean...

Three Sorts of Naturalism

Hans Fink

1.

My title, obviously, alludes to the title of John McDowell’s well-known andinfluential paper ‘Two Sorts of Naturalism’. His paper first appeared in aFestschrift for Philippa Foot, and it opens with a tribute to her:

Philippa Foot has long urged the attractions of ethical naturalism.I applaud the negative part of her point, which is to reject various sorts ofsubjectivism and supernaturalist rationalism. But I doubt whether wecan understand a positive naturalism in the right way without firstrectifying a constriction that the concept of nature is liable to undergo inour thinking. Without such preliminaries, what we make of ethicalnaturalism will not be the radical and satisfying alternative to Mrs Foot’stargets that naturalism can be. Mrs Foot’s writings do not pay muchattention to the concept of nature in its own right, and this leaves a riskthat her naturalism may seem to belong to this less satisfying variety.I hope an attempt to explain this will be an appropriate token offriendship and admiration. (MVR: 167).

McDowell here sets the scene for his discussion by first distinguishing betweentwo sorts of non-naturalism in ethics—subjectivism and supernaturalistrationalism—which he follows Philippa Foot in rejecting. They could both becharacterized by their insistence that there is a fundamental discontinuitybetween the ethical and the natural. At a crucial point, they claim, any attempt toaccount for ethical values or norms will have to appeal to something in a realmwhich is not of the same ontological or epistemological order as the natural,either because ethical values or norms are man-made in a way that make themindependent of and somehow secondary to and less real or less objective thanordinary natural facts, (as in forms of value-nihilism, anti-realism, subjectivism,relativism, projectivism, error-theory, quasi-realism, non-cognitivism, emotivism,prescriptivism, voluntarism, conventionalism, existentialism etc.) or because atleast some ethical values or norms are eternal, absolute or divine in a way thatmakes them independent of and somehow prior to and more real or moreobjective than ordinary natural facts (as in forms of Platonism, absolutism,rationalism, intuitionism, divine command theories etc.). An accusation againstnaturalists for committing a naturalistic fallacy may be issued both from belowand from above, as it were, claiming that naturalists take ethical values or norms

European Journal of Philosophy 14:2 ISSN 0966-8373 pp. 202–221 r 2006 The Author. Journal compilation r BlackwellPublishing Ltd. 2006, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.

to be either more or less firm or objective than they really are. Ethical valuesand norms are used to measure human conduct and there is a pull towardseither regarding the measuring rod as something of extraordinary rigidity andstability or regarding it as a matter of personal engagement capable of motivat-ing but ultimately based on mere subjective attitude or more or less parochialconvention.

McDowell recognizes the force of both these pulls but finds it necessary toresist them. This brings him within the broad scope of naturalism. An ethicalnaturalist is someone who insists on a fundamental continuity between theethical and the natural. Ethical values or norms can and should be accounted forwithin the realm of nature and in terms of or based on ordinary natural facts.There are several forms of naturalism, however, and it is a main aim forMcDowell to argue against one specific form of naturalism which is verycommon in modern philosophy, but as he sees it, based on an unduly restrictedconception of nature and bound to misrepresent the ethical. In the paper, this sortof naturalism is referred to as ‘neo-Humean naturalism’ (MVR: 183, 194) or‘empiricistic naturalism’ (MVR: 186) and in many places in Mind and World (MW)as ‘bald naturalism’ or ‘naturalism of the realm of law’ or ‘naturalism ofdisenchanted nature’. This sort of naturalism takes it for granted that reality is‘exhausted by the natural world, in the sense of the world as the naturalsciences are capable of revealing it to us’ (MVR: 173) but claims that the ethicalcan and must be understood as having a place or being rooted in the naturalworld even as it is thus understood in abstraction from any specifically humanconcern. Putative ethical reasons for action need to be grounded in facts of therealm of natural law in order to be in good standing, and at least some ethicalreasons for action can be thus grounded. All we need by way of ethics can begrounded in facts about the natural world as ‘the province of scientific under-standing’ (MVR: 182), including, e.g. facts about ‘what animals of a particularspecies need in order to do well in the sort of life they naturally live’ (MVR: 176).(This is actually a form of naturalism that Philippa Foot comes quite close toexemplifying.) This form of naturalism, in fact, has the same narrow conceptionof nature as many subjectivist non-naturalists but differs from them in claimingthat an understanding of the animal side of human nature can give us sufficientdirect ethical guidance without the additional intervention of some personal actof prescribing or endorsing which can be performed or withheld at will.

McDowell regards this sort of naturalism and the underlying conception ofnature (which it shares with much subjective non-naturalism) as undulyrestricted, and as a dubious philosophical response to the rise of modern science,a piece of ‘shallow metaphysics’ (MVR: 182) or ‘philistine scientism’ (MVR: 72),and he argues that we need not restrict ourselves to a conception of nature whichis purged of everything specifically human.

A scientistic conception of reality is eminently open to dispute. When weask the metaphysical question whether reality is what science can find

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r The Author 2006. Journal compilation r Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2006

out about, we cannot, without begging the question, restrict the materialsfor an answer to those that science can countenance. (MVR: 72)

He insists that this point ‘does not involve debunking the scientific way ofunderstanding nature’ (MVR: 187). There is nothing wrong with the naturalsciences. They reveal ever-deeper insights into the workings of the natural world.Their insights are, however, distorted if they are taken not only to revealsomething about the natural world but to define it or to exhaust what it reallycontains, thus excluding from the natural world all that the natural sciences haveinitially disregarded in order to get going.

It is crucial for McDowell that his criticism of this—his first—sort ofnaturalism should not be seen as implying any kind of super-naturalism. Hetherefore argues for an alternative position that is a sort of naturalism, too, but inwhich the problematic restriction in the conception of nature has been rectified.This is his second sort of naturalism that he believes has an equal or even a betterright to the name ‘naturalism’ than that of his opponents. This intellectualinvestment in a broader sense of naturalism is an explicit theme throughoutmuch of his work, not just in ethics, but also in the philosophy of mind and inother areas of philosophy, prominently so in MW and in ‘Naturalism in thePhilosophy of Mind’ (McDowell 2004). Reality may indeed be exhausted bythe natural world, provided, however, that this is understood in a richer sense ofthe natural world that includes all our human potentials including thosenecessary for becoming ethically virtuous or, indeed, for becoming a scientist.McDowell refers to a naturalism based on this richer conception of nature as an‘acceptable naturalism’ (MVR: 197), a ‘relaxed naturalism’ (MW: 89) and a ‘liberalnaturalism’ (McDowell 2004: 98). He often introduces it by reflecting onAristotle’s account of the virtues, and he refers to it as ‘Greek naturalism’(MVR: 174), ‘Aristotelian naturalism’ (MVR: 196), ‘naturalism of secondnature’ (MW: 86), or ‘naturalized platonism’ (MW: 91). The richer conceptionof nature behind this sort of naturalism is also called a ‘partial re-enchantmentof nature’ (MW: 97) though there is clearly meant to be nothing supernaturalabout it.

Basically, I believe I am in rather deep agreement with McDowell, and I shouldlike to think of myself as joining in the search for ways of formulating andarguing for an acceptable, radical and satisfying sort of ethical naturalism basedon a not unduly restricted conception of nature—a search that his work helpsalong, but which is certainly as yet unfinished and probably open-ended. I shalldo so by paying some further attention to the concept of nature in its own right inorder to raise some questions about how, exactly, McDowell’s own, second, sortof ethical naturalism is to be understood. How does he rectify the restriction thatthe concept of nature is liable to undergo in our present day thinking? Howbroad does he take the concept of nature to be? I shall be distinguishing betweenrestricted and unrestricted conceptions of nature. I shall further show thatrestricted conceptions of nature can come in quite different, often competingversions like materialist or idealist, empiricist or rationalist, subjectivist or

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objectivist conceptions of nature. I have chosen to illustrate this by reference toexplicit discussions in Plato and Aristotle of materialist conceptions of naturequite similar to the conceptions of nature underlying bald naturalism. In bothPlato and Aristotle the outcome of the discussion seems to be an idealistconception of nature that is still a restricted conception. On this basis I shalldefine three broad sorts of naturalism in ethics: 1) materialist naturalism,2) idealist naturalism, and 3) unrestricted or absolute naturalism. (It could just aswell have been 1) empiricist, 2) rationalist and 3) unrestricted naturalism, but theexplicit reference to Plato and Aristotle will allow me to comment on McDowell’scredentials to titles like Greek naturalism.) I shall then go on to discuss how toplace McDowell’s position in relation to schemes like this, given that no form ofethical non-naturalism could be an option for him. Is his position a sort ofmaterialist naturalism, restricted, but somehow less restricted than baldnaturalism? Is it an idealist (basically Platonic or Aristotelian) sort of restrictednaturalism? Is it an open, unrestricted sort of naturalism? Or are there otheroptions?

I shall introduce my three sorts of naturalism via some elements of a generalanalysis of the ordinary modern use of the term ‘nature’ (section 2) and a briefdiscussion of texts by Plato and Aristotle (section 3). In section 4 I shall then bearguing that nothing short of a completely unrestricted or absolute naturalismwould be the acceptable, radical and satisfying sort of naturalism for McDowell’spurposes. It is, however, by no means clear that this is his preferred position, butI shall argue that he faces some difficulties on his own terms if he directly rejectsthat it is. As a minor point, I shall be arguing that McDowell’s references to‘Greek naturalism’, ‘Aristotelian naturalism’, ‘naturalised Platonism’, ‘naturalismof second nature’, ‘relaxed naturalism’, ‘liberal naturalism’, or ‘partial re-enchantment of nature’ may help loosen the grip of certain reductive forms ofnaturalism but that they do not really point us in the right direction when itcomes to the understanding of a positive naturalism providing a convincingalternative to bald naturalism.

2.

Let us begin by noting that the apparently simple structure of super-naturalism/naturalism/subjectivism has the obvious terminological problem that it involvestwo rather different discontinuities between the natural and something extra-natural, two discontinuities that are difficult to keep in focus at the same time.However sharply a subjectivist distinguishes between the natural on the onehand and the ethical as man-made, artificial, projected, conventional or whateveron the other, his account of the ethical will nevertheless be naturalistic in thesense that it is surely not meant to appeal to something super-natural. Even themost ardent emotivist anti-naturalist can be seen as some kind of (bald) naturalistin ethics. It is no accident that Hume is regarded both as an arch-naturalist and anarch-anti-naturalist, and that he goes out of his way to stress that in a certain



sense nothing is more natural for human beings than the artificial virtues (THN:III.II.I). Similarly, however much a super-naturalist emphasizes the exalted statusof the roots of the ethical, her account will nevertheless be naturalistic in thesense that it does not see the ethical as man-made and artificial. The wholenatural law tradition in ethics with its insistence on the existence of a moral lawthat is not of human making and yet humanly accessible bears witness to this. Itis no accident that Thomas Aquinas is regarded both as a naturalist and a super-naturalist in ethics. On a suitable conception of the natural, there may thus besomething naturalistic even about an account of the ethical that is explicitly non-naturalistic on another conception of the natural.

This is a terminological issue, but it is not easy to resolve simply by choosingone’s definition of ‘nature’ and then sticking to it. No account of naturalismshould forget the fact that ‘nature’ is, as Raymond Williams puts it, ‘perhaps themost complex word in the language’ (Williams 1981: 184), or as Hume puts it, aword ‘than which there is none more ambiguous and equivocal’ (THN: III.I.II.). Inthis section I shall try to give a somewhat systematic overview of some of thiscomplexity that simply cannot be reduced by philosophical fiat.

One general source of ambiguity is that we use the concept of nature in tworather different ways when we are talking about a) the nature of something—e.g.my nature, human nature, the nature of a certain mineral, something being in thenature of things—and when we are talking of b) nature as a realm of its own, theworld of nature. Every x has a nature (regarded as something internal to x) andevery x has a place in nature or in relation to nature (regarded as somethingexternal to x whether x is seen as included in nature or not). The understandingof a) is basic to the understanding of b) so let us begin by considering what it isfor an x to have a nature, postponing the question of how the same word can beused both of that which is your innermost self and at the same time, and even inthe same sentence, of certain parts of your surroundings where you may or maynot choose to go for a walk. Perhaps it is by your very nature that you are a loverof nature.

First, it is worth noting that we may talk about the nature of absolu-tely everything, any x whatsoever. Individual human beings, mankind, animals,plants, things, materials, properties, relations, events, processes, concepts,ideas—all can be said to have a nature. Even something as elusive as theJapanese reception of Heidegger’s philosophy has its own nature. Indeed, it is adeep root of ambiguity that we can talk about the nature of art, law, language,culture, morality, normativity, history, civilization, spirit, mind, God, or nothing-ness even if we otherwise regard these as non-natural, that is, as not belonging tonature as a realm. There is no contradiction in talking about the nature of theunnatural, the super-natural, or the non-natural, just as it is an open questionwhat the nature of the natural is. Our concept of nature has what we could call anover-arching nature: Which ever way we distinguish between a realm of natureand other realms, items on both sides inevitably have a nature.

Everything, any x, can be said to have a nature, but it is a further source ofambiguity that any x has both its own individual nature and the nature of the

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species or kinds it may be seen as belonging to. The nature of x is both what isspecial about this x and what makes this x one of the x’s as opposed to the y’s.When x is defined per genus et differentiam both the genus and the differentiatingcharacteristic and their combination could be taken to express what is the natureof x. Our word ‘nature’ is derived from a Latin word for birth, conception,coming into being. Your nature is something you have from your very beginningboth as an individual and as a member of your kin, gender, nation, general kind.(Incidentally, the last five words all have the same etymological root as ‘nature’.)Your nature is what differentiates you from all others. It is your own unique andcharacteristic way of being; your special physiological, physical constitution;your unique genetic code; the deepest and most individuating layers in yourpersonality; the unmistakable tone of your voice. On the other hand, your natureis also what you have in common with certain others. Your nature exemplifieshuman nature. It takes your sort to make all sorts, but basically you are like therest of us who each have our own individual nature while sharing in humannature. Our common human nature again is both what is special and what isgeneric about us as a kind. Human nature is what differentiates us from theanimals and the plants. By nature we are rational beings. Our human nature,however, is also that in virtue of which we belong to the animal kingdom and tothe living organisms. By nature we are mammals. We may thus use the conceptof nature to differentiate rather than include, but also to include ratherthan differentiate. And we may use the concept of nature to express thatdifferentiation and inclusion should not be seen as incompatible.

Everything, any x, can be said to have a nature, but what is it that x has, whenx is said to have a nature? We may try to elucidate this by considering some of theexpressions that are often used to explicate the meaning of ‘nature’. The nature ofx is the essence of x, the constitution of x out of its more elementary constituents,the defining characteristics of x, that about x which explains how x behaves, thatwhich x is ordinarily, that which x is in and of itself prior to and independent ofexternal interference. These common formulae, however, do not mean exactly thesame, and they may not be consistent with each other on all interpretations.Terms like ‘essence’, ‘constitution’ or ‘defining characteristics’ are not obviouslymore perspicuous than the term ‘nature’ itself. The nature of x is the tautologicalexplanation of the behaviour or conduct of x, but what is demanded and whatsuffices as explanation under given circumstances may vary enormously. Talkingabout the nature of x as that which x is in and by itself prior to and independentof external interference raises a lot of questions about what may count as external(human, divine, unusual?) interference, questions that have no resolution on aconceptual level. All such circumscriptions take the nature of x to be somethingabout x that is somehow primary rather than secondary, original rather than laterachieved, basic rather than superstructural, necessary rather than accidental ornormal rather than extraordinary. Again, these do not mean exactly the samething, and they are all subject to different interpretations. The primary, forexample, may be regarded as separable from and opposed to the secondary, orthe primary may be regarded as permeating and allowing the secondary, so that



the secondary is an expression of the primary, and similarly with the othercontrasts. Again, we find a conceptual pattern where ‘the nature of x’ may beused both to mark a contrast and to bridge that contrast.

The nature of x is something primary, original, basic, necessary, or normalabout x. Rather different aspects of x may, however, with some right be regardedas primary, original, basic, necessary, or normal. The idea of nature as essence maypoint in an idealist direction, the idea of nature as constitution out of moreelementary constituents may point in a materialist direction, whereas the idea ofnature as the defining characteristics may point in a formal or rationalisticdirection. Your nature may be seen either as something mental, a matter of deeplayers of your individual psychology (whether instinctive, emotional or personal),or as something material, a matter of anonymous generic physiology, genetics orphysics. Taken this way, these are contrasting conceptions of the nature ofx prioritizing something we know about x over something else we know about x.

Our concept of nature, however, also allows for a conception of the nature ofx identifying it with absolutely everything that is true of x. All we can come toknow about any possible aspect of x is knowledge of the nature of x; nothingabout x is so inessential, so secondary, or so extraordinary that it does not belongto the nature of x. It would be wrong to leave anything out. The nature of x is theunity in all possible knowledge about x. One could, of course, ask if thisidentification of the nature of x and the totality of all that can be known about x isreally a conception of the nature of x? Isn’t the nature of x of conceptual necessitysomething primary, original, basic, necessary or normal about x? Yes, but here is astraightforward sense in which the totality of all that can be known about x is,indeed, primary, original, basic, necessary and ordinary relative to anydifferentiation within our knowledge of x between primary and secondary,original and later achieved, basic and super-structural, necessary and accidental,or ordinary and extraordinary elements. This would be a non-contrastingconception of the nature of x open to any future additional information about x.

A further source of ambiguity that I shall just mention and then leave aside hasto do with the ways in which normativity is attached to conceptions of the natureof x. In contrasting conceptions the primary, the original, the basic, the necessaryand the normal are often put on the positive side. But not always so; the primarymay be the primitive, the original may be the old fashioned, the basic may be thebase, the necessary may be the unfree, the ordinary may be the boring. We mayuse the concept of nature normatively to express a rather low opinion of ournature as merely animal and other than our true self, as in the thought that ‘ournature is what we are in this world to rise above’, which a Victorian lady has beenquoted as saying. We may also use it to express a rather high opinion of ournature as deeply personal and identical with our true—but endangered—self, asin the thought that ‘even in what people do for pleasure, conformity is the firstthing thought of; (. . .); until by dint of not following their own nature they haveno nature to follow;’ to quote another Victorian, John Stuart Mill (Mill 1977: 265).We can, however, also use the concept of nature non-normatively to express thethought that our nature is what we cannot help exemplify. We are by nature just

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the way we are. This non-contrasting, non-normative usage, however, has thenormative edge to it that there must be something misleading about both of thequoted Victorian thoughts. On this conception our nature is something we canneither raise above nor lose.

To sum up: Our use of the term ‘the nature of x’ displays a highly complexcombination of excluding and including, contrasting and non-contrasting,restricted and unrestricted uses. The excluding, contrasting and restricted usesmay be used to mark many different differences. There is no single contrast thatis inevitably being appealed to.

We come now to contexts where we talk about nature in general, the realm ofnature. We can approach this by replacing ‘x’ with ‘everything’ or ‘the world’ inthe question ‘What is the nature of x?’ This brings us to questions like: What isthe essence, the constitution, the defining characteristic of all there is? Whatexplains how the whole world behaves? How would the world be in and of itself,prior to and independent of any external interference? What are the primary,original, basic, necessary and normal traits of the world we live in? We can thenmake a conceptual shift from talking about the nature of the world to talkingabout nature as those parts or aspects of the world that we regard as belongingto the nature of the world. A contrasting and restricted conception of the natureof the world would then identify nature with certain parts or sides of the world.On the other hand, a non-contrasting and unrestricted conception of the nature ofx would identify nature with absolutely everything there is. (This conceptualmove would give the promised reconstruction of how the same word can come tobe used both of that which is your innermost self and of certain parts of yoursurroundings where you may or may not choose to take a walk, and in which youmay or may not be seen as included.)

In ordinary language ‘nature’ or ‘the natural world’ is actually understood in aquite bewildering number of different ways which illustrates the different waysin which different parts or aspects of the world in its totality are somehow takento be external to or other than nature. We can initially distinguish between at least8 different ways of conceiving of nature as a realm in contrast with other realms:

1. The world prior to or unaffected by human, cultural or socialintervention.

2. The world prior to or not under agriculture—the wilderness, thejungle, the desert, as opposed to the cultivated world of the farmland,villages and towns.

3. The world prior to or not subjected to urbanization—the rural, thecountryside, the landscape, the outdoors as opposed to life in the citiesand indoors.

4. The world prior to or not subjected to industrialization—the organic,the ‘green’ as opposed to the synthetic and high-tech.

5. The material or physical or external world as opposed to the mental orpsychological or inner world.



6. The empirical world as opposed to the intelligible world of theabstract, logical, or mathematical.

7. The earthly world as opposed to the heavenly world—the created(immanent) world as opposed to its transcendent creator.

8. The ordinary world as opposed to a world of the extra-ordinary andmystical.

These are all different versions of restricted conceptions of nature as a realm. Theycontrast nature with other realms somehow outside or independent of nature. Thefour first conceptions implicitly identify the world with the surface of the Earth,and then divide this world up according to whether or how much it has beenchanged by human, cultural, social and industrial activity. Something abouthuman beings and the parts of their surroundings over which they exercise a highdegree of control is seen as contrasted with the parts of their surroundings overwhich they have no or little control. On the first conception there may not be muchnature left on earth if one takes the unintended consequences of emissions to theoceans and the atmosphere into account. On the second conception there is stillsome nature left but increasingly in the form of ‘nature parks’ or ‘national parks’and subject to a fairly benign human control and protection. The third conceptionis probably the most common understanding of nature in the Western World today(at least in Europe). Here, nature includes the farmland rather than what is leftsurrounding it, and all plants and animals whether wild or domesticated. Thefourth conception allow us to see exquisite cultural products like planed wood,roof tiles, leather, wool, cotton- and silk fabrics as natural materials. The fifthconception takes the human mind to be set over and against the external world ofwhich it receives information and forms its own understanding. The sixthconception takes formal and abstract entities to form a world of their own. On theseventh conception human life and thinking are included in nature but contrastedwith a sphere of a higher order of reality with which the human soul may have anaffinity both during life and after death. The eighth conception regards nature aslaw governed and predictable as opposed to phenomena explicitly regarded asdefying or being contrary to the ordinary laws of nature.

On top of all those ways of marking contrasts within the totality by help of theterm ‘nature’ our ordinary language also allows a conception of nature as allthere is. Such a ninth conception of nature would be an unrestricted conception.It would express the idea that there is one world only, and that that world is therealm of nature, which is taken to include the cultural, artificial, mental, abstractand whatever else there may prove to be. There are no realms above or beyondnature. To be is to be in nature and to be in continuity with everything else innature. Even the greatest and deepest differences are differences within naturerather than differences between nature and something else.

The list of possible conceptions of nature as a realm could be made longer or bedifferently structured, but it suffices to show that it does not go without saying whatthe realm of nature is. Or rather, it shows that it does indeed go without saying but inso many different ways, that some further saying is needed if we want to make it

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somewhat clearer what we are talking about. On the conceptual level it issystematically unclear whether no human activities, some human activities or allhuman activities belong to nature as a realm. There is no nature tout court.

3.

I shall return to the relevance of all of this for the understanding of McDowell’sown sort of naturalism, but first I shall go into some detail concerning thephilosophical use of the Greek concept physis (which is the direct etymologicalroot of our ‘physics’ and ‘physiology’ but standardly translated by ‘nature’ andhighly influential in the formation of both the philosophical and ordinary uses ofthis concept which is itself derived via Latin from a completely differentetymological root). I shall begin by going back to an explicit discussion of physisby the old Plato in his last work, Laws. I shall also include a brief account ofAristotle’s official definitions of physis in the Physics. It may seem a detour, but itmay help us understand the peculiar, hyper-complex logic of our present dayconcept of nature, and I shall, as mentioned, need it in order to define materialistand idealist naturalism and also to examine to what extent the reference to Greeknaturalism can carry the weight placed on it by McDowell.

In Laws, Book X, the question of the right understanding of physis comes upduring a discussion between three elderly gentlemen about how crimes ofsacrilege should be dealt with in the laws of a good, but not utopian, polis. Inearlier times, they agree, things were easier: every one was brought up to fear thegods, so sacrilege hardly ever occurred, and there was no doubt about how itshould be dealt with if it did. Recently, however, written literature has beenproduced by wise or clever men claiming that there are no gods. These viewsappeal to the young who thereby come to question not only the notion ofsacrilege but also the whole divine foundation of the laws and the establishedsocial order. Plato’s spokesman—who is here not Socrates but an anonymousAthenian—explains this dangerous modern doctrine—‘a very grievous unwis-dom which is reputed to be the height of wisdom’—to one of his interlocutors,the Cretan, Clinias. I shall quote at some length.

Ath.: It is stated by some that all things which are coming into existence,or have or will come into existence, do so partly by nature, partly by art,and partly owing to chance.(. . .)Ath.: I will explain more clearly. Fire and water and earth and air, theysay, all exist by nature and chance, and none of them by art; and bymeans of these, which are wholly inanimate, the bodies which comenext—those, namely, of the earth, sun, moon and stars—have beenbrought into existence. It is by chance all these elements move, by theinterplay of the respective forces, and according as they meet togetherand combine fittingly,—hot with cold, dry with moist, soft with hard,



and all such necessary mixtures as result from the chance combination ofthese opposites,—in this way and by these means they have brought intobeing the whole Heaven and all that is in the Heaven, and all animals,too, and plants (. . .); and all this as they assert, not owing to reason, norto any god or art, but owing as we have said to nature and chance. As alater product of these, art comes later; and it, being mortal itself and ofmortal birth, begets later playthings which share but little in truth, beingimages of a sort akin to the arts themselves—images such as paintingbegets, and music, and the arts which accompany these. (. . .). Politics too,as they say, shares to a small extent in nature, but mostly in art; and inlike manner all legislation, which is based on untrue assumptions, is due,not to nature, but to art.Clin.: What do you mean?Ath.: The first statement my dear sir, which these people make about thegods is that they exist by art and not by nature,—by certain legalconventions which differ from place to place, according as each tribeagreed when forming their laws. They assert, moreover, that there is oneclass of things beautiful by nature and another class beautiful byconvention; while as to things just, they do not exist at all by nature, butmen are constantly altering them, and whatever alteration they make atany time is at that time authoritative, though it owes its existence to artand the laws, and not in any way to nature. All these, my friends, areviews which young people imbibe from men of science, both prose-writers and poets, who maintain that the height of justice is to succeed byforce; whence it comes that the young people are afflicted with a plagueof impiety, as though the gods were not such as the law commands us toconceive them; and because of this, factions also arise when theseteachers attract them towards the life that is right ‘according to nature’,which consists in being master over the rest in reality instead of being aslave to others according to legal convention. (Plato Laws: 888 E–890 B)

The ‘modern’ scientists here discussed distinguish three types of causes bywhich something can be brought into existence, nature (physis), chance (tyche)and human intervention or art (techne ). To come to exist by nature (physei) is tocome to exist by inner force or necessity. Each of the four elements fire, air, waterand earth possess such an inner force that determines their way of being andtheir effects on each other. The inner force of the elements in combination withblind chance accounts for the existence of many things in the world. Togetherthey have brought about the existence of the sun, the moon, the earth, the plantsand the animals. No intelligent design, divine or human, was involved. Humanbeings like other animals come to exist by nature and chance, but they have thespecial power to make new things come into existence by the help of art, law(nomos) or nurture (melete). The products of these could not have been created bynature and chance alone. That which exists by nature, however, is ontologicallyprimary, original, basic, necessary and normal relative to that which has a

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secondary and dependent form of existence because it owes its existence not to itsown inner force but to human intervention. Human beings may even use theirimagination to create patterns of thought that are quite independent of what existsby nature. They may thus invent a whole realm of gods and deities, shown to bemerely illusory by being different from society to society. Conventional justice,similarly, does not exist by nature but merely by human invention of laws—oftenbased on appeal to illusory deities or other bad arguments with no properreference to what really exists by nature. Conventional ethics is thus wholly man-made and without true reality and objectivity. An unconventional ethos of self-aggrandisement, however, would be ‘according to nature’ (kata physin).

What we have here is a completely disenchanted and severely restrictedconception of nature excluding not only anything supernatural but much of thehuman, cultural and social as well. This conception of nature is quite close to therestricted conception of nature behind both subjectivist anti-naturalism and baldnaturalism in ethics, so it is underlying the first sort of naturalism both onMcDowell’s and my reckoning. Of course there are enormous differencesbetween the science that is modern today and the science modern around 350 BC,but I believe we should not underestimate the importance of the availability ofsuch ancient materialism as a live inspiration for the advance of modern science.The possibility of restricting the natural to elementary material forces asgoverned by blind necessity and chance, and the further possibility of construingthe ethical as specifically human and of a precarious ontological andepistemological status potentially undermining its authority in social life hasclearly been present since antiquity and has been formative in the early history ofour concept of nature. Of course such a restriction took on much greaterrespectability and became much more influential with the success of modernscience, but there is a conceptual continuity that I see reasons to stress, ratherthan to disregard. At least the example shows that it is not as if all Greeks just hadan innocent unrestricted or broad conception of nature that we could simplyreturn to after rectifying the restrictions of a specifically modern conception ofnature. This will become clearer as we go on.

The Athenian sets out to refute this dangerous doctrine. He does so byfocusing on the concept of psyche, which has not been explicitly mentioned so far.

Ath.: It appears that the person who makes these statements holds fire,water, earth and air to be the first of all things, and that it is precisely tothese things that he gives the name of ‘nature’, while soul he asserts to bea later product therefrom.(. . .)Ath.: As regards the soul, my comrade, nearly all men appear to beignorant of its real nature and its potency, and ignorant not only of otherfacts about it, but of its origin especially,—how that it is one of the firstexistences, and prior to all bodies, and that it more than anything else iswhat governs all the changes and modifications of bodies. And if this isreally the state of the case, must not things which are akin to soul be



necessarily prior in origin to things which belong to body, seeing thatsoul is older than body?Clin.: Necessarily.Ath.: Then opinion and reflection and thought and art and law will beprior to things hard and soft and heavy and light; and further, the worksand actions that are great and primary will be those of art, while thosethat are natural, and nature itself,—which they wrongly call by thisname—will be secondary, and will derive their origin from art andreason.Clinias: How are they wrong?Athenian: By ‘nature’ they intend to indicate production of thingsprimary; but if soul shall be shown to have been produced first (not fireor air), but soul first and foremost,—it would most truly be described as asuperlatively ‘‘natural’’ existence. Such is the state of the case, providedthat one can prove that soul is older than body, but not otherwise. (PlatoLaws: 891C–892C)

This last passage is crucial for the argument and highly interesting. The Atheniandoesn’t just leave the concept physis to the ‘men of science’. He does not firstaccept their conception of nature and then confront them with the claim thatthere is something extra-natural—the soul or the gods—which they havedisregarded and which is in fact prior to nature. No. Like McDowell theAthenian is eager to have nature on his side. He therefore challenges thescientists’ right to restrict the term ‘nature’ to the soulless, partly necessary andpartly accidental combinations of the elements. As he sees it, the common groundbetween them is a definition of nature as that which is primary in existencebecause caused by its own inner force and not by something else. The men ofscience claim that it is something material, the four elements, that fulfil thisdefinition, but if the Athenian can show that soul is primary in existence, he shallalso have shown that soul has the better right to the name ‘nature’. Notice thatthe soul is not being introduced as super-natural, but as superlatively natural, thatis, even more natural (primary, original, basic, necessary and normal) than whatsome, or perhaps even most, people call nature.

The Athenian’s conception, however, depends on the possibility of provingthat soul is older than body. Here follows a long argument the upshot of which isthis:

Ath.: What is the definition of that object which has for its name ‘soul’?Can we give it any other definition than that stated just now—‘themotion able to move itself’?Clin.: Do you assert that ‘self-movement’ is the definition of that verysame substance which has ‘soul’ as the name we universally apply to it?Ath.: That is what I assert. And if this be really so, do we still complainthat it has not been sufficiently proved that soul is identical with theprime origin and motion of what is, has been, and shall be, and of all that

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is opposite to these, seeing that it has been plainly shown to be the causeof all change and motion in all things?Clin.: We make no such complaint; on the contrary, it has been provedmost sufficiently that soul is of all things the oldest, since it is the firstprinciple of motion.(. . .)Ath.: Truly and finally, then, it would be a most veracious and completestatement to say that we find soul to be prior to body, and bodysecondary and posterior, soul governing and body being governedaccording to the ordinance of nature.Clin.: Yes, most veracious. (Plato Laws: 896A–C)

This, I take it, is pretty rampant Platonism but clearly presented as an account ofthe soul as natural because primary in existence and the only thing with the innerpower to make itself and other things move and change. Mind is prior to world.What the men of science call nature the Athenian might call dependent existenceor ‘‘second nature’’ relative to the soul-like ‘first nature’. Both parties to thediscussion have their own restricted conception of nature privileging either thebodily or the soul-like respectively. Nature is identified with either ‘‘world-stuff’’or ‘‘mind-idea’’ and in both cases to the exclusion or the reduction to secondarystatus of the other.

If we take a very brief look at one of the most explicit discussions of physis inAristotle there are clear differences to Plato but the conceptual structure issimilar. A short selection from the Physics:

Of things that exist, some exist by nature, some from other causes.‘By nature’ the animals and their parts exist, and the plants and thesimple bodies (earth, fire, air, water)—for we say that these and the likeexist ‘by nature’.

All the things mentioned present a feature in which they differ fromthings which are not constituted by nature. Each of them has within itselfa principle of motion and of stationariness (in respect of place or ofgrowth and decrease, or by way of alteration). On the other hand, a bedand a coat and anything else of that sort, qua receiving thesedesignations—i.e. in so far as they are products of art—have no innateimpulse to change. But in so far as they happen to be composed of stoneor of earth or of a mixture of the two, they do have such an impulse, andjust to that extent—which seems to indicate that nature is a source orcause of being moved and being at rest in that to which it belongsprimarily, (. . .)(. . .)

Some identify the nature or substance of a natural object with thatimmediate constituent of it which taken by itself is without arrangement,e.g. the wood is the ‘nature’ of the bed, and the bronze the ‘nature’ of thestatue.



(. . .)Another account is that ‘nature’ is the shape or form which is specified

in the definition of the thing. (. . .) (not separable except in statement).(. . .)

The form indeed is ‘nature’ rather than the matter; for a thing is moreproperly said to be what it is when it has attained to fulfilment thanwhen it exists potentially. (Aristotle Physics: 2, 1, (192 b 7–193 b 12))

The discussion is mainly concerned with how to understand the nature ofsomething. Like in Plato, we find here both a definition of the word ‘nature’ (aninner source or cause of being moved and being at rest) and two competingconceptions of what that source is, namely matter and form (the material and theformal cause in Aristotle’s sense). Aristotle himself finds it most satisfying toregard the formal (and the teleological or final) cause as the nature of x. Theofficial theory of Aristotle seems, thus, to be a restricted idealist conception ofnature presented with the possibility of a restricted materialist conception ofnature in clear view, but for him the underlying contrast is between matter andform rather than between body and soul.

4.

With reference to Plato and Aristotle I have characterized two sorts of contrastingor restricted conceptions of nature, a materialist and an idealist. Each of themcould be seen as underlying a sort of naturalism in ethics or in other branches ofphilosophy. The materialist conception of nature is at the root of bald, empiricistnaturalism and of the many different modern forms of naturalism that let one orother interpretation of the results of present day science define what belongs tonature and what not. (A materialist conception of nature is also being taken forgranted by most forms of non-naturalism, whether subjectivist or super-naturalist). The idealist conception of nature is at the root of the natural lawtradition of naturalism that is still alive. The philosophical impulse behind boththese sorts of naturalism is to see the ethical in continuity rather thandiscontinuity with nature understood as that which is most primary in existenceand most objective in experience. They just happen to disagree about what that is.

With reference to the over-arching or all-inclusive use of the concept of natureI have further characterized a non-contrasting conception of nature. This could betaken as underlying a third sort of naturalism that could be called unrestricted orabsolute naturalism. This is not the most common sort of naturalism, though it isnot unheard of either. There might be something like it in Heraclitus or forms ofStoicism, and there certainly is something like it in Spinoza’s conception of Deussive Natura, the Natura that is the underlying unity of natura naturans and naturanaturata and which alone could be said to be its own cause, causa sui. In modernphilosophy I believe that nothing less than this is implied by the concept ofnatural history in § 25 of Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations:

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—Commnding, questioning, recounting, chatting, are as much a part ofour natural history as walking, eating, drinking, playing. (Wittgenstein1967: 12)

It is even more explicit in the young Adorno when he says:

If the question of the realtion of nature and history is to be seriouslyposed, then it only offers any chance of solution if it is possible tocomprehend historical being in its most extreme historical determinacy, where itis most historical, as natural being, or if it were possible to comprehend nature asan historical being where it seems to rest most deeply in itself as nature.(Adorno 1984: 117, italics in original)1

The emphasis on the historical character of nature and the natural character ofhistory is important to counter our tendency to think of nature as static and thehuman as free-floating. Whatever happens happens in nature. I find this sort ofnaturalism also in Dewey when he uses an example from geology to stress apoint relating to aesthetics:

Mountain peaks do not float unsupported; they do not even just restupon the earth. They are the earth in one of its manifest operations. It isthe business of those who are concerned with the theory of the earth,geographers and geologists, to make this fact evident, in its variousimplications. The theorist who would deal philosophically with fine arthas a like task to accomplish. (Dewey 1958: 3–4, italics in original)

On this conception the aesthetical (and the ethical) are not independent of nature,but they are not somehow based on nature or supervening on it either; rather,they simply are nature in some of its manifest operations. To think otherwise isboth to mystify the aesthetical (and ethical) and to trivialize nature. The man-made, the artificial, the cultural, the historical, the ethical, the normative, themental, the logical, the abstract, the mysterious, the extraordinary, are allexamples of ways of being natural rather than examples of ways of being non-natural. Nature is never mere nature. That which is more than mere is nature, too.

The philosophical impulse behind this third sort of naturalism is a generalanti-dualism and anti-reductivism. If there were no anti-naturalists and noreductive naturalists there would be little point in insisting on understandingnature as all-inclusive. This could therefore not be the first form of naturalism tobe developed historically. We have to begin with a struggle between differentconceptions of what is primary to what, but the fact that there are so manyincompatible contrasting and restricted conceptions of nature and the fact thateach of them creates formidable difficulties in accounting for that which isregarded as non-natural provides a strong motivation for trying to explicate anabsolute conception. Calling that which is at one side of a distinction ‘nature’ hasa metaphysical import that inevitably tends to turn that distinction into adualism. To take the absolute conception of nature for granted does not by itself



solve any problems and it involves problems of its own, but it seems to me themost promising way of avoiding the otherwise endless oscillation betweenmaterialist and idealist, empiricist and rationalist conceptions of nature while atthe same time keeping in touch with the genuine tensions from which theyspring: Something surely at the very centre of McDowell’s thinking.

According to this sort of naturalism one should resist any tendency to regardnature as a special realm or domain among other realms or domains. Natureis that which all possible domains are domains of. Nature is all there is, all that isthe fact, all that happens. There is nothing above or beyond nature and thereis nothing below or besides nature either. On this conception of nature to say thatsomething is natural is not to say something specific about it but merely to denyclaims from others that a certain domain could be in discontinuity with or be suigeneris in relation to nature, given that it has its own nature and belongs to naturein this the broadest possible sense.

On this conception of nature, nothing could be non-natural, unnatural, super-natural or extra-natural. So, of course, the ethical is natural. There is nothing elseit could be. Nothing is secondary in an absolute sense. The totality of absolutelyeverything, however, is primary in an absolute sense which gives room for allkinds of relations of priority between different aspects within the totality.2 Usingthe famous quotation from Sellars we could say that to understand nature is tounderstand ‘how things in the broadest possible sense of the term hang togetherin the broadest possible sense of the term’ (Sellars 1963 : 1).

Both materialist and idealist naturalism may be argued for with reference toscience. (Emphasizing the mathematical and law-like character of science may betaken to point in an idealist direction.) Unrestricted naturalism can equally claimto be capturing what is important about science. Here, however, it is notparticular results or aspects of science that are taken to define what is nature andwhat is not. It is rather the open, undogmatic character of science combined withits aspiration to account for everything in continuity with everything else that oneappeals to. Using another famous quotation from Sellars against himself wecould say that where restricted, empiricist naturalism is claiming that ‘science isthe measure of all things’, (Sellars 1963: 173) unrestricted naturalism takes it to bedefining of science that all things are the measure of science.

These are my three sorts of naturalism. How do they correspond toMcDowell’s two sorts of naturalism? As I have already indicated, I find thatwhat McDowell calls bald or empiricistic naturalism is clearly in the tradition of arestricted materialist naturalism, so at least initially one should think that hisown second sort of naturalism could not belong to this sort.

How about the idealist naturalism that I believe must be regarded as theofficial doctrines of Plato and Aristotle in the passages considered? In spite of hisreferences to ‘Greek naturalism’ it seems quite clear that this could not beMcDowell’s second sort of naturalism, either. He is explicitly not trying to replacea materialist, empiricist conception of nature with an idealist, rationalistconception. He is trying to help us get free of such dualisms. It would thus bewrong to place his second sort of naturalism at the same level as bald naturalism,

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in the way in which the two conceptions I have extrapolated from the discussionsby Plato and Aristotle are on the same level. Idealist naturalism and absolutenaturalism are two quite different ways of opposing materialist naturalism whileremaining a naturalist.

If this is true McDowell’s appeal to ‘naturalized Platonism’ and ‘Aristoteliannaturalism’ must be somewhat problematic for his own purposes. Talking about‘naturalized Platonism’ is, of course, a way of pointing beyond bald naturalismwhile at the same time distancing oneself from rampant Platonism, but it seemsto me rather unclear what ‘naturalization’ could mean here. If this notion isrelying on a restricted conception of nature referring to the results of science, onewould need to hear more about exactly how far bald naturalism is being openedup, or exactly how far the ‘partial re-enchantment of nature’ is supposed to go,and these are questions McDowell, in my view wisely, refrains from trying toanswer. When McDowell talks about ‘Aristotelian naturalism’ or ‘naturalism ofsecond nature’ it is clearly Aristotle’s position in the Ethics that he has in mind,but the use of the concept of physis there is quite consistent with its use in thePhysics. When Aristotle says of the moral virtues that they:

. . .are engendered in us neither by nature nor yet in violation of nature;nature gives us the capacity to receive them, and this capacity is broughtto maturity by habit. (Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics: 1103a26)

the point is precisely to emphasize that virtues, like beds, are not due to natureand not according to nature though, again like beds, not contrary to nature either.In modern usage, I suppose, the notion of second nature is mainly used aboutsome, but not other, habitual traits that are so firm that they are like nature(considered as permanent) without actually being nature (permanent). Anydistinction between first and second nature certainly keeps something like thebald naturalist conception of nature in the picture, and leaves it an open questionexactly how far into the ethical (or mental) second nature reaches.

The way I have presented an absolute naturalism based on an unrestrictedconception of nature seems to me to be an acceptable, radical, and satisfying sortof ethical naturalism both in itself and for many of McDowell’s purposes. Thisconception is not simply a ‘liberal’ or a ‘relaxed’ naturalism, it actually needs arather careful explanation because it is clearly not as if we would all know whatnature is if only we got rid of the misleading bald conception of it. Nevertheless,there is something straightforward about it. McDowell has convincingly shownthat what Bernard Williams calls the absolute conception of reality is merelyrestricted, bald naturalism ideologically presented as absolute (MVR: 112–31, esp.sect. 5). Nothing less than a naturalism that deserves to be presented as absolutecould help break the spell of bald naturalism without merely replacing onerestricted sort of naturalism with another and thus keeping the oscillations going.A naturalism based on the unrestricted, absolute conception of nature seems tome to be the only candidate. There may be restricted conceptions of nature thatI have not taken into account, but if McDowell’s own, second sort of naturalism



should be understood as based on such a conception, perhaps some kind ofmaterialist or empiricist naturalism somehow less restricted than bald natural-ism, it seems fair to say that he owes us an account of exactly where and why hedraws his line between nature and something else, and in particular what thatsomething else is supposed to be.

Hans FinkDepartment of PhilosophyUniversity of AarhusDK-8000 Aartus [email protected]

NOTES

1 ’Wenn die Frage nach dem Verhaltnis von Natur und Geschichte ernsthaft gestelltwerden soll, bietet sie nur dann Aussicht auf Beantwortung, wenn es gelingt, dasGeschichtliche Sein in seiner au�ersten geschichtlichen Bestimmtheit, da wo es am geschichtlichstenist, selber als ein naturhaftes Sein zu begreifen, oder wenn es gelange, die Natur da, wo sie als Naturscheinbar am tiefsten in sich verharrt, zu begreifen als ein geschichtliches Sein’ (Adorno 1973:354–55).

2 If anyone should doubt that there is a consistent notion of absolutely everything fornature to be identified with, I can recommend a highly technical paper by TimothyWilliamson called ‘Everything’, where scepticism about absolute generality is shown to beinconsistent though everything is not identified with nature (Williamson 2003).

REFERENCES

Abbreviations:

MVR: McDowell, J. (1998), Mind, Value and Reality. Cambridge, MA: HarvardUniversity Press.

MW: McDowell, J. (1996a), Mind and World. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Second edn. (First edn. 1994).

THN: Hume, D. (1969), A Treatise of Human Understanding. Harmondsworth:Penguin Books. (First edn. 1739–40).

Adorno, T. W. (1973), Gesammelte Schriften, Band I. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, ‘Die Idee derNaturgeschichte’ (1932).

—— (1984), ‘The Idea of Natural History’, Bob Hullot-Kentor, trans., Telos, 60: 111–24.Aristotle (1962), Nicomachean Ethics. London: The Loeb Classical Library, Heinemann.—— (1963), Physics. London: The Loeb Classical Library, Heinemann.Dewey, J. (1958), Art as Experience. NewYork: Capricorn Books. First published 1934.Hume, D. (1969), A Treatise of Human Understanding. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.

(First edn. 1739–40).

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McDowell, J. (1996a), Mind and World. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2ndedn. (First edn. 1994).

—— (1996b), ‘Two Sorts of Naturalism’, in R. Hursthouse, G. Lawrence and W. Quinn(eds.) Virtues and Reasons: Philippa Foot and Moral Theory. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Reprinted in McDowell 1998.

—— (1998), Mind, Value and Reality. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.—— (2004), ‘Naturalism in the philosophy of mind’, in M. de Caro and D. Macarthur (eds.)

Naturalism in Question. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Mill, J. S. (1977), Collected Works of John Stuart Mill vol. XVIII. Toronto: University of Toronto

Press. From On Liberty, first published 1859.Plato (1961), Laws. London: The Loeb Classical Library, Heinemann.Williams, R. (1981), Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society. London: Fontana/Croom

Helms.Williamson, T. (2003), ‘Everything’, in Philosophical Perspectives, 17, 415–65.Wittgenstein, L. (1967), Philosophical Investigations, G. E. M. Anscombe trans. Oxford: Basil

Blackwell.



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